Church Cross and Baltimore

Failing for the moment to secure insurance so I can drive my new MB, we opt for a rental for a week or so and hit the road (sort of). Actually Francie decided a little isolation in a West Cork cabin would be good for us, so our destination is Jason's cottage, just down the road between Skibbereen and Schull. This turned out not to be the best. The little Ferringi owner, in addition to charging us way too much for a house in the middle of nowhere, also wanted us to pay ALL the utilities. There was no mention of this during the reservation conversation or on the website. When we told him we weren't staying because of this unannounced expense he was quite put out and withheld part of our money. Can't say we recommend this particular cottage.

On the other hand, it had a peek-a-boo view of the infamous Fastnet light between Heir Island and Cape Clear. That was pretty cool for an old sailing romantic such as meself.

So, once again fancy free and foot on throttle, we set out for parts unknown. Baltimore looked interesting, we could see it across the water from Jason's. It appeared to have a waterfront and somebody told us there was a ferry we could take from there to several islands. Well, none of the B&B's right in town were open, but

Rolf's, up the hill was. Turned out to be OK, once we got through the issue of not being able to rent the "cottage" for less than a week.

The ferry to Cape Clear, and across Roaring Water bay is pretty iffy this time of year, but we were able to take the short ride out to Sherkin Island, home of the O'Driscoll's.

There's an abbey right at the ferry landing that provides some history of the area and lots of grave sites. This is one of the wierd things you see in Ireland - all the abandoned christian religous sites have grave stones everywhere, inside, outside, on the remaining walls - everywhere. Many of the stones are quite recent, 2000, 2001. It must be considered a very good thing to be buried in this hallowed ground.

There were a couple pubs and a little general store and that's about it. One of the pubs was closed, the other larger one served dry sandwiches for too much dinero, but they had good beer. We hiked around much of the habited part of the island, visiting a remote beach and a small country school. Caught the last ferry off the island, the one that waits for the school teacher. Lucky for us she was a little late (the teacher that is).

Corcaigh

At last we reach what has been Francie's goal all along, Ireland. I was sort of looking forward to it too. But 50 deg N in February? It's freakin' COLD here. And about 3 hours of feeble twilight that calls itself a grand sunny day. We shoulda gone to Africa. Or stayed in Thailand! It was pretty darn nice there.

Anyway, we're in Cork at the Kinlay guest house. Appears to be one of the larger ones here, everybody seems to know about it, even the cab driver. Despite my whining about the latitude, the attitude is a whole different thing. The people in Ireland, even in this decade of boom and immigration, are the nicest you'll find anywhere. They like to talk, they have interesting things to say. There's a genuine feeling of welcome and human-ness. Even the dogs are friendly. All of them. I figure that must be because the people they meet are nice to them, so why shouldn't they be friendly?

Kinlay house is a rambling old structure that's been around since 1700 or so, home to the destitute, old folks, soldiers, and now young immigrant wannabe's from all over the EU. Mostly Frankish this week. Man, the girls are cute. Sorry lads, no pics.

It's right under the famous Shannon Bell tower, part of the St Anne's church, which has been here since the late 18th century. The clock faces, known as the "Four Liars" are among the biggest in Europe. They're called that because the hands are so big they're affected by weather and don't all show the same time. They never have.

I fixed a couple of their badly managed computers and earned free internet, as long as I use my laptop (which I would prefer to do anyway), so things are good here for figuring out what we're going to do. Which is a problem, because we weren't supposed to get to Ireland until April or something and the house isn't available yet. Francie did talk with Tom and the house will be available on the 21st of Feb, but that leaves 3 weeks up in the air.

So we hang at Kinlay in Cork for a week or so to sort things out, like buying a car, trying to get insurance, getting warmer clothes, figuring out where we might want to go for the next 5 months etc.

INTO THE WEST- ROARINGWATER BAY

We've been in Ireland for over a week now- and it feels normal to be here- like we live here or something! One of the things about all this travel that bothers me is that it starts feeling commonplace to be in some of the most exotic places. Not that Cork is exotic exactly- but it's always felt especially exciting to be here. It still feels fantastic- just more like home. So to spice things up were going to the wild west coast for 10 days before we move into our house in Bandon on the 21st. We're going to a little cottage called Jason's Cottage (google if interested) outside of Skibbereen- on Roaringwater Bay , a ferry's ride from Heir Island where I've spent time before at John Desmond's Island Cottage restaurant. We will be 7km from any town, but there is a source of Guinness closeby. Always in Ireland.
In Cork city I've been hitting the Charity shops pretty hard and have amassed a small fortune in Irish sweaters! Also a new elegant black Irish wool coat for me, a wool pea coat for Connor, a black leather jacket for Robert and a wooly fleece-lined coat for Josie. This is important as it is cold here. Like winter in Oregon. Not freezing but cold enough to need coats- which we haven't needed until Turkey where we had to wear layers upon layers to keep warm. We really should have stayed about a month longer in Thailand!! But Ireland is good regardless of the weather- and warm cheap (gorgeous) clothes are plentiful! Best Thrift shops in the world!
We've all been content here- Robert has found a Mercedes station wagon to buy and if he can figure out how to get insurance we'll be able to buy it. Kind of frustrating but hopefully it will come together before we spend thousands on car rentals. Connor has found a shop that specializes in Warhammer figures that he love to paint and create armies with. Josie is getting to know EVERYONE in the Kinlay House hostel which is full of people from all over, but mostly French. So she is an progressive American diplomat these days and plays a mean hand of Hearts. They all love her!

WERE HOME IN IRELAND!

We are in Cork City, Ireland at the moment, staying in a nice hostel Kinlay House by the Shandan Bells up the hill from town. We got here a few days ago- with both Robert and I coughing our heads off (almost literally) with this cold that we just couldn't shake. Getting better now after going for acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine. We get to cook up this pot of very interesting looking dried herbs, twigs, berries and leaves and make a tea which we both drink morning and night. Tastes awful but it's doing the trick and we are already feeling better.

The cold started in Istanbul where we spent the previous 2 weeks. I'd like to say that we had a wonderful time in Istanbul- since that's what everyone tells us about their visit -BUT- we didn't have a wonderful time. The best part about it was our stay with our friend Laurie and kids from Corvallis. That was nice and we were made to feel so at home with her. But she lived a little too far away from the city- like 2 bus rides and a ferry each way- so we decided to move into the old part of Istanbul- Eminonu- for the 2nd week we were there. Eminonu is important as it has the oldest, largest Mosgues and the Ayamaria which is a gigantic Catholic Cathedral turned Mosque turned Museum. So we went and stayed in a quest house right between the Blue Mosque and Ayamaria. In retrospect that was our mistake, as that is THE tourist area and we were among the few tourist around during this week in the dead of winter- and the Turkish men selling RUGS and anything else- you name it- pounced upon us and harassed us no end. We felt like we did on French Island Australia trying to keep from getting eaten by the mosquitoes!! It was really that bad. We left very disappointed with Turkey in general and Istanbul in particular and have no plans to ever set foot there again! And it was cold- really cold- there was this Siberian blizzard which dumped over a foot of snow and blew like crazy for the first 3 days we were there. That was actually the best part! We had wonderful fun in the snow at Laurie's!

But -ahh- Ireland feel so good!! The contrast between here and Istanbul is amazing. People are friendly, for one thing. I was walking down the hill to town Saturday morning and watched an old man all the way down, greeting his friends and humming as he walked. We met a woman on the plane from Turkey who lives here and were going to visit her tomorrow. We were going to try to WWOOF at a farm here for the first 2 weeks while we wait for our home to be ready. Unfortunately no one needs anyone at this time but several people responded and have invited us to visit them if we like. We'll move into our house on the 21st. The address is THE OLD HOUSE, KNOCKBROWN, BANDON, COUNTY CORK, IRELAND. Until then we will probably rent a cottage over by Youghal in East Cork by my favorite beach Knockadoon. We re in the process of buying a car. Robert found an old Mercedes Station Wagon- the car of his dreams! It will cost less than the price of renting a car for the time were here and we can sell it before we leave. We are trying to figure out how to get the cash here to buy it. A funny dilemma. A transfer needs an account to transfer to. We can't take that much out of our ATM. Hmmmm.

Turkey, in both senses of the word

The name of this file is Turkey. That about sums it up. Istanbul is a turkey of a destination. The weather sucked, the people (with a couple major exceptions) were rude and obnoxious, and it was very polluted. But the bus and ferry system worked well, provided you had a map of the city in your head, because there were no usable maps of either system to be found anywhere.

Istanbul is the only major city spanning two continents; they have cute little signs saying "Welcome to Europe/Asia" on the the two bridges that span the Bosphorus Strait. Our friends live on the Asia side of the city, which is the newer side. Not too much in the way of old buildings or historical sites. But we got to take the ferry to get across to the other side which was kinda fun.

The first several days there, while we were getting over our jet lag, it was pretty nice, although 10C seemed really cold after Thailand. We got to tour the main shopping area. Then it snowed. And blew. The weather man said warmer and sunny the next day. He was wrong. For 4 days it snowed and blew. We did go out and play in the snow a little, but actually going touristing was pretty much out of the question. Finally, it cleared and warmed up a little, so we moved into Eminonu, the old city. This is where we were introduced to the extreme "entrepreneral spirit" of the turkish people. Every man on the street (and they were always male, even the children), wanted to sell us something, usually "turkish" carpets. They would not leave us alone, following us up the street shouting lower and lower prices as we walked away. They even would pretend to be "volunteer tour guides" around the big mosques, just to get a chance to say, "Won't you come into my shop and buy a carpet?" The national motto is "How may I help you spend your money?" I suppose if we were from New York City or hadn't just come from sweet genteel Thailand it might not have felt so assaultive, but we aren't and we did, so we didn't like it.

On the other hand, once you get past the assault of the Mongols (look up the history of this area for an idea of where the aggressive attitude comes from), there are some amazing historical features here. Things like the arm, hand and part of the skull of John the Baptist, weapons and other booty from half a dozen civilizations over the eons. One of the more interesting ones was (part of) an obelisk from Egypt. It was dated ~5000 BC, yet was obviously of far better material and craftsmanship than far more recent artifacts seen here.
Since we had so much fun here, we plotted an early departure. Problem is, it's still frozen in Spannocchia. Also, it turns out there are no ferries from Turkey to Greece (Doh! Read a little world history already. These guys have been skirmishing since time began.) So I don't get to take the ferry across the Aegean. Then there's the luggage problem. Flying on the major airlines is possible but expensive. But in Europe (and the UK and Ireland) one can fly on Ryan Air, EasyJet or the like for practically nothing. But you don't get to take much luggage. So, it's straight off to Ireland where a house awaits us. Or so we thought...

PS: It probably wasn't as bad as this makes it sound. After all, we managed to take 500 pictures. Perhaps I'll come back and write some more about Istanbul. But not right now.